Biographies And Stories

Wednesday, August 28, 2019

Hello blog readers I am posting from my phone across the street from the Metro PC place where I bought it and where I would be paying for monthly service $62 to get unlimited hotspot so I would not have to do this but anyways the phone comes on and connects to the internet whenever I come within 200 ft of the place and so since I have not been getting around to posting and instead, have been creating music that I'm going to post but I have to work for like 36 hours on, in the studio to get it to be where I want it to be,

Anyways; I'm speaking into the phone and I feel important because I'm talking into my phone And this will be my post unless I drag my lazy self to the computer laboratory at Sacred Heart and plug in and work there while other residents skulk by frowning at me because they think I am trying to show off the fact that I have a computer and I am literate by flaunting it in front of them at the computer lab
(That is their own mental health cross to bear, but it still annoys me).

I am thinking, myself, about trying to get a disability check for mental health reasons because I probably am technically mentally ill if you were to measure using certain criteria

Saturday, August 24, 2019

Time to go out and play at the Lilly Pad, and compete with a huge diesel type generator that is powering a huge floodlight which is illuminating the Catarpillar machine a block up the street from where I play.

I guess they don't want anybody crawling up upon the thing at night.

There is a chance that that is as far as the construction crew is going to go, but I doubt it because someone has spray-painted a red arrow on the sidewalk right by where I play, pointing to perhaps where some pipe is interred that they are about to dig up.

Who knows. Maybe there are heavy metals in the drinking water because of the old pipes which is making everyone in the Quarter who drinks it, insane.

Tuesday, August 20, 2019

I am in my apartment, where suddenly a lot of things beside busking are rearing their heads as becoming equally appealing as alternatives.

Even though I am flat broke, and out of tobacco.

The screenshot above, taken a few minutes ago shows a typical Tuesday night in late August on Bourbon Street, with nothing on the horizon to look forward to except the Southern Decadence festival, of which I have bad memories.

I totally need to figure out the shortest distance between myself and some kind of job. Some under the table thing would be just fantastic.
I feel that the busking thing could be taken up a notch and I can add some equipment to my inventory.
Namely, a clip on microphone that could go right on the harness that holds the harmonica, and could be attached by wireless, to a small amplifier that I could hide inside my backpack.
That way, I could still appear to be unamplified, but would have a little bit of reserve volume, and a bit of echo and reverberation, to keep pace with the times, when it is just getting louder on the street in general.

I spent about a half hour putting this together,

I might as well post here

It would be easiest to buy the stuff using money that is somewhat guaranteed, rather than be faced with the dilemma of having one huge tip fall in my lap and then have to wonder when the next one might come, and should I run out and spend every cent on a microphone and a wireless setup etc. and then maybe wind up having nice sounding gear but no toilet paper in my house, type of thing.

At least with a normal job, if I am scheduled to work x amount of hours, then I can pretty much count on x amount of money being available for toilet paper and buy my music equipment accordingly...

Saturday, August 17, 2019

Boy, have I ever gotten a shot in the arm in some way, and had my energy level go through the roof!
I got off my ass and walked the 200 feet to the computer lab to post the song above, and it took less than 3 minutes to load up to Soundcloud.
This song was recorded using Jacob's i-phone.
His microphone is better than the one in my LG Aristo phone.
There is a super amount of compression in the recordings, but this only means that my singing, which I was sure was going to be buried in the mix, is audible. I actually couldn't see where Jacob had laid his phone, else I could have stepped toward or away from it as the music may have required.
Jacob's job is to sit and watch the house which has been enclosed in a huge tent, to make sure nobody tries to trespass upon the house which had been fumigated that day, and breath the deadly poison.
It is the cushiest imaginable job. It is being paid for being.
Sitting in a car with a laptop, watching a movie, then maybe grilling some burgers in the driveway and having a barbecue, jamming with acoustic instruments in the same driveway. Hell, taking a dip in the pool in the back yard if there is one. It's all in a day's work when you sit and guard a Terminex site.
It's actually too bad for me personally that the job is such a walk in the park, because Jacob's boss might have been able to employ me, since I told him I was looking for work when Jacob introduced me to him.
He is an older guy who used to be a very good guitarist, who could play Van Halen, but who then injured his hand in some kind of accident and now doesn't play at all. He drives a pickup truck and is a "religious" man, if his mentioning God frequently is any indication.
I think the particular job is just too cushy for Art, as that is his name, to give out to a chance acquaintance, such as myself.
It's the kind of job reserved to be given out as "favors" for someone.
Someone like Bob, who is Jacob's guardian (ex guardian, since he is over 21 now).
Bob may have been in need of a favor, and that particular job is a godsend to Jacob, who really abhors physical labor, according to him.
I need to find someone who has a shittier job to offer, at least as "bad" as mowing lawns, if I want to pick up a few hours here and there.
Not enough to throw a monkey wrench into my current rent arrangement, but enough extra money coming in to keep a wi-fi connection in my apartment, buy new harmonicas, and to not have to go out to busk on those rare occasions when I am not in the mood to.

But, there were were, at the job site, playing acoustic instruments until almost midnight in a neighborhood where the houses are packed pretty closely together; and there I was singing "Look out, the house is poisoned!," which I know is poor grammar; but a splendid time was had. A guy named Josh, who lived next door came over upon hearing us and introduced himself and asked if we would like a didgeridoo and Jew's harp player to join us.
The recording is the result.
I added "piano" and "timpani" in my studio. I put the terms in quotes because the instruments were digital samples of said actual instruments.
I wish I had a set of tuned timpani in the apartment, along with a grand piano...

I am home after having made 28 bucks busking, arriving out there, as I did, at almost midnight, and playing for what amounted to about 2 hours.

At one point a small group of Latinos arrived and I thought I recognized one of them as a guy who has stopped by my spot probably 3 times in the past 5 years, and who I see around the Quarter in other places, and who usually tries to get me to play “Hotel California,” and then walks off without tipping.

But, it wasn’t him, and I wonder if the 20 dollar tip he left might have been larger had I not eyed him suspiciously when he walked up with a “arent’ you the guy who is usually drunk and asks me to play Hotel California and then doesn’t tip?” look on my face.

This guy’s resemblance to him was quite remarkable, right down to his having the same “Buddy Holly” eyeglasses on his face and wearing a baseball cap.

And, after he asked: “Can you play Hotel California?” my reaction was:

“I’ve played it for you before...” ...you know I know how to play it...

But, either it wasn’t the same guy, or the guy was in the process of skeezing the other two guys he was with and maybe he had told them that he was new in town, as part of the skeeze, and what I said contradicted it.

But, he quickly produced a 20 dollar bill and then requested the Eagles song again, which I did. I started to wonder if my singing voice has deteriorated since I was 27 years old, because I was struggling with the high notes which I can remember hitting back in 1989...

I had been down to 43 cents and had played for probably the first 45 minutes without making anything.

When the first dollar went into the basket, it was Harold’s food.

Finally enough money came in so I could get nicotine cartridges and a Bang energy drink.

I determined that, as bad as it is to be addicted to nicotine, it is better than being so and not having any.

My addictions are keeping me from having brand new harmonicas, if I want to look at it that way. Which is a shame, seeing as they are where the money comes from...

Well, at least I don’t have to scale down the side of a cliff on a rope ladder and cut a bee hive off the face of it while being stung in the face...

Friday, August 16, 2019

I had started writing Wednesday morning, about 48 hours ago, and finished only a couple paragraphs.

Despite having plenty of Yellow Borneo kratom, and a mango, green tea, ginger and honey, I have not output work commensurate with that.
Part of the problem is the incredible laziness which keeps me from leaving my apartment with my laptop and keyboard and walking probably 200 feet to the computer lab, and then plugging into their ethernet connector and loading stuff up onto Souncloud and then linking it to this blog.
I learned last month, after burning a third of my monthly data loading the song "Jo, Look at My New Shirt," along with the cover photo of Hitler's troops marching up the street past a couple young girls in bathing suits.

The reason I put that photo on the thing was as an experiment to see if I would get a million hits on the song.
Because I read about how mothers were putting videos of their kids playing in a sandbox or on a waterslide on Youtube only to see them garner hits in the millions, while maybe another one right beside it on her channel, one of herself teaching how to make a birdhouse out of Popsicle sticks, only got 11 hits..

It was, apparently traced to pedophiles, the running of the hit count into the millions. So, I decided to create the picture as a cover for the song, to see if I would at least get a thousand hits from pedophiles, especially ones in boring places like Pakistan, who might think that the girls lip sync along with the song or something, and that maybe at 2:43, they both (inexplicably) do the splits

But, no. The song has 5 listens and I know at least one of those was my friend Jacob.

My latest work just isn't going to get posted unless I walk down to the computer lab soon, before fatigue takes me.

A good amount of people out, as I wake up at almost 11 PM and try to shake off the cobwebs and go out to play for at least a couple hours.
I fear that the road will be dug up around where I play, though. That doesn't show in the webcam shot, 2 blocks away...

Tuesday, August 13, 2019

Esteban was from Puerto Rico and he tipped me 10 bucks during the second of what would amount to about 7 songs that I played in an attempt to probe his musical tastes and entertain him.

But, as can be heard towards the end of the recording that I made that night, when I said something like: “Yeah, he was putting the gay move on,” it turned out that Esteban’s hanging out most of the night was somewhat tied to that agenda.

He was kind of heavy set and in his thirties, and talked about the places where he has been and the languages that he knows how to speak, namely Spanish, Italian and I think one kind of obscure one, such as whatever they speak in Moldavia “but only there,” he added.

He has been all over the world, but seemed slightly bored with it (the world) from what I gathered.

After I finished playing he invited me to sit with him on Lilly’s other stoop, where he was waiting for the return of Terry, a large black man who has been a fixture of the block for at least the past 3 years.
He wears military style clothing and is in his early thirties and in pretty good shape.
Esteban had promised to smoke a joint with Terry when he returned, and was including me in the offer.

But then he drunkenly instructed me to hold my hand out, ostensibly to assist him in breaking up the bud in preparation of rolling it.
But, after I held my hand out for that purpose, he took hold of it, as if I hadn't positioned it right, and, telling me that it had to be more in the shape of a bowl, began to manipulate it into that shape.
That being accomplished, he started to break up the bud in my hand, touching it way more than what would seem to be required in the process.

His breathing became more heavy, and one of his legs had apparently gotten out of his control and was touching one of mine.

I made the quick assessment that I wouldn’t be being homophobic or politically incorrect, were I to distance myself from him at that point, so I stood up and, after looking down the street in the direction from which Terry should have been approaching already, and stating that I didn’t see him and really didn’t have time to wait any longer “My cat was already meowing for food when I was leaving,” I bid Esteban adieu, who, to his credit gave no sign that he felt that he had been snubbed. Or that he felt like I owed him anything for his having hung out for an hour and a half and tipped me ten bucks.

Saturday morning, 2:41.
I am listening back to the recording that Jacob and I made at the sight of the job he was “working.”

The job is for Terminex, the termite people, and involves sitting next to a house over which a huge orange tent has been erected so that it could be fumigated.

Just to make sure nobody is going to try to walk past the “deadly poison” signs, written in several languages and enter the house and poison themselves, Jacob is on duty at ten dollars cash per hour, watching Youtube, listening to music, or in the case of tonight, playing the acoustic bass while I played guitar and a next door neighbor, who happened to play the didgeridoo and a strange variant of the Jews harp which consists of a reed which is not played with the teeth, but rather the lips, did so.

We jammed while recording on Jacob’s phone and Josh’s phone, as that was the neighbor’s name, but only until such a point that the guy’s wife called and the phone shut off the recorder when he answered it.

But, I was focused upon my own playing a bit too much, perhaps, and wasn’t noticing how good the didgeridoo, harp and the bass sounded, until I listened back to our recording.

But, by free styling a few verses about "deadly poison," we were able to come up with the jam that I am hoping to post here soon, but not through the hotspot that I'm using now. I burned a third of my data posting the last song that I put on here.

But I think our song was a nice little anthem to warn the neighborhood to “Beware, there’s poison in there,” as one of the lines goes.

It is now Saturday the 10th of August.

I can’t believe how fast this day has arrived from around 20 days ago when the data ran out.

But now, I am on a short juice fast.

I was pushed to the point of it, due to the fact that, as these past few weeks were flying by, my accomplishments were nowhere near keeping pace.

It really boils down to the potent bud that I have been getting which I have pretty much determined, through experience to be, as Jay Leno termed it: “ambition be gone.”

Early Friday evening I was about to go to the computer room to catch up on a few things, and then go out to busk.

A look at the web cam on Bourbon Street revealed a lot of people.

But, I was bored out of my mind and thinking that getting stoned would be better than being bored.

Although, I did recall all the times that I had smoked that kind of bud and then, not until three hours had passed was I pulling myself up from a comatose attitude on my bed, and shaking the cobwebs off, drinking coffee and trying to give myself a pep talk which would get me out to the Lilly Pad and playing.

Those times, I had consoled myself with the theory that arriving at midnight and playing until 3 AM could be just as good, if not better, than playing from 10 until 1 AM.

But, sure enough, there I was waking up at 11:30 PM, after having dozed off listening to one of the self help dialogues, out of the “Awaken the Genius” book.

I dragged myself out there, feeling dopey and lethargic and, most ominously, not even having any song playing in my head, that I might try to do once I got out there.

After an hour of trying to psyche myself into playing, without the benefit of anyone having thrown a random tip in my basket in order to kick start me in that sense, I concluded: “The next time I hardly feel like playing music at all, I’m not even going to come out here.” and I left.

The barricaded area of Bourbon that is being dug up is within 50 yards of the Lilly Pad. It is possible that they have scheduled the construction around the “Red Dress Run,” which is to take place tomorrow for which Lafitt’s Blacksmith Shop Tavern is kind of a landmark of, either being the starting or the finishing point of the “race.”

I am very much hungry right now, but the fasting seems to be the right thing now. Especially since I have been sabotaging my own efforts lately, at getting things done. I should have been putting daily blog posts up, along with posting some of the music that I worked for about 16 hours on.

It’s just that the music needs a final organizing. It is reflective of the scattered energies of a stoner at this point. I had gone to the computer lab with the intention of posting some of it, but during a cursory listen to it, I noticed an annoying glitch that I hadn’t noticed before? was too stoned to have noticed? was so stoned that it sounded cool to me in a quirky, annoying way?

Who, knows. But right now I am starving, but will just drink 8 ounces of apple juice, to be followed by 8 ounces of water a half hour later, and so on, for the next week or so, I hope.

The Ever Pending Trip To New England
Maybe this will put me in good shape for making that trek to New England, right at the start of the Southern Decadence festival that I have perennially hated so much since I came to New Orleans.

I think the time I went to Baton Rouge and wound up being thrown in jail for 45 days was an improvement upon what I might have had in store for me had I hung around here that August.

67 megabytes a day is about my allotment of them, using the free government phone that I got just for being a recipient of food stamps.

Maybe where you are, they set up tents across the street from the food stamp office, or nearby a Wal-Mart or dollar store, offering "free phones."

It would be naive to think that there is no ulterior purpose behind the government providing these phones for free.
The reason given to me when I first got one, back during the Obama administration, was that, even a homeless person has a basic "human" right to have access to services provided through dialing 911.

There were murmurings about the government tracking the things, or monitoring them for illicit drug related activities.

It's hard not to imagine some huge map on the wall of some war room with pinpoints of light representing each phone nationwide and intensely bright around all bridges, and some director of Homeland Security or something, telling the president: "There's your homeless population!" and then them plotting some way that voter registration apps could be sent directly to all the phones -an ambition that left the White House along with the democrats...

It is most likely a way for them to count the number of homeless people in the nation. And especially in regards to assigning representatives and calculating electoral votes based upon population (maybe Florida is actually bigger than Pennsylvania, if you count all the homeless, type of thing).

It can also be guessed that the typical carrier of a government phone will vote democrat, too.

I have just burned today's data by looking at a dozen photos on imgsrc.ru and then watching most of the video "How To Make A Hosepipe," which was linked to Alex in California's blog.

This gives me kind of an idea about what I can expect to get out of my 2 gigabytes of free data through the thing.

Friday, August 9, 2019

I finally got around to dimming the background image a bit on this blog, so that on mobile devices, it won't compete with the text as much.
I reduced the brightness by 40% and brought the contrast down a hair.
I'm really not sure which will help bring out the text more, reducing brightness or contrast.
Choosing a black and white background did not solve the problem created by the fact that any color of text that I might choose to go over it is going to be either a bright color or a dark color. And thus will get lost in the brightest or darkest parts of the background image.

I thought about really reducing the contrast so that both the darkest or brightest text colors would benefit.
But decided to reduce the brightness, since my text is a pastel yellow.
But, this might be an ongoing process. I have to wait until I am within wi-fi reception to see what the result will look like on my phone.

I am faced with the problem that, since I have been staying in a lot during the recent heat wave, I haven't become acclimated to it, the way I was when I lived outdoors, for example, and it feels stifling when I go outside.

But, in order to busk on this Friday night, I will have to just get used to it.

This is what it looks like right now (below) which is the time I am usually leaving to go down there...

I guess not bad for an August 9th...
What I can't see from this shot is if the construction crew has reached, and dug up, the block where I usually play.

Wednesday, August 7, 2019

I am once again posting verbally using my smartphone as a receptor of what I say.
I have ridden my bike to the Euphorbia kava bar on some Street near the river but really not so far in fact if I was younger I would probably make this my regular go to spot replacing the Uxi Duxi, which was half of the distance away but infinitely more gay
This is probably 25 minutes of heavy pedaling.
So, I have ridden out here and I am partaking of a shot of Kratom they are prices are outrageous though compared to Uxi, but this is a stopgap measure on a Wednesday night when I want to get something accomplished in my studio at least to upload what I already recorded and I promise I'm going to dim the contrast on the background image that appears on mobile phones when mobile phone users go to this blog because it is really hard to read the yellow text on top of the yellowish background I now realize over and out

Tuesday, August 6, 2019

Okay people, I am in front of the supermarket again I it is Tuesday night and it is getting kind of towards midnight and this is the easiest way for me to post to my blog because I sure as hell am not going to sit there with my thumbs going like I am doing a cat's cradle or something but I will have Wi-Fi in my house again on the 10th and that's going to come before you know it

Thursday, August 1, 2019

connected to their Wi-Fi.
I had a little scare when my blog was inaccessible but it turned out that the Blogger site itself was down temporarily and it wasn't just my blog but I haven't posted in awhile and I'm doing this by speaking the post into my phone and about It is Thursday night and it was 90°+ today, but feels like 79 now, and I'm probably going to go out and busk.
They are closing off Bourbon Street, one block at a time, to replace underground pipes or something, and they are doing the 800 block now. This is keeping some people from venturing past the barricades and coming down as far as where I play, I think.
The barricades are tall chain link fences with plastic sheets covering them as if they want to hide the area being dug up from view. This hides also, the Clover Grill and the Nola Poboys places (both "5 star" establishments) from view, too, never mind Lafitt's another block down.
Any day now, perhaps tonight, they will start digging up Lilly's block, and when this happens, I can't see playing there, unless it has the desired consequence of keeping me visible to the bar patrons along with funneling them past me when they leave.
Every year the odds of my making a trip to New England diminish.
I just might hop out onto the road and busk my way up there, going from Starbucks to Starbucks to blog my progress, until I get the tip somewhere large enough to take to Greyhound to get a ticket all the way to Worcester, Mass